Why is it your responsibility alone to ensure that everything has been done to save the relationship? What part does he play in all this? Have his actions demonstrated that he is committed to working on the relationship? Furthermore, while you are trying or considering trying to save this relationship, what happens to your children?
I don't have an answer for this one.
When I was 18 I had a child with a guy who is still obsessive and dangerous (he has a lot of traits that are associated with active alcoholism, actually). We were apart for the entire pregnancy, and then right after my son was born a series of events had us living together and trying to parent our son together. It was two years of total misery. It was complicated by my parents, who believed that this was my punishment for getting pregnant as a teenager. They held the purse strings and refused to help me leave him, until the night my mother came over, saw me in a complete meltdown, and swept us up and out of there. I never went back, but that's when the real abuse began. My ex, who the People with Many Diplomas believe is NPD, targeted me as someone who needed to be brought down to size. I tried working with him to co-parent, and for years he undermined me, lied, manipulated me, had my parents, friends, acquaintances, believing terrible things about me, and then he mounted an epic custody battle where I had to answer questions about my sexual relationships (because of course I was a total ****!), whether or not I was an abuser (because of course I was unstable!), whether or not I was a substance abuser. Meanwhile, I'm living at home with my strict parents, trying to figure out how to go to college, trying to reconnect with old friends he'd isolated me from. I was literally a straight A student trying my best but everyone from my parents to the judge looked at me like I was a piece of trash. It was a total mind f*ck. It took me years of therapy to tease out fact from fiction, and to learn that there was nothing I could have done, no matter what he or my mother said, to make it right. I still have a hard time dealing with him on occasion because he's so unpredictable.
So here I am, more than a decade later, weighing my options with an emotionally unavailable man right after having a baby. All of this confuses me. All afternoon I've been thinking about what Cyranoak said about controlling behavior, which is wild because I feel so out of control. Do I think my RAH would do to me what my ex did? I would hope not, but I can't be sure. He has resources. My counselor doesn't have experience with addiction, so she's trying to refer me out. My parents still think that if I just loved him enough, or in the right way, it would make everything okay. His parents are delusional --- they equate sobriety with recovery. They think I'm a big ol' killjoy for not being more grateful for his recovery. There are so many question marks. I feel like I need more answers before I can move. Right now the confusion is paralyzing.